Waking
by starboarder
Summary: The night before her wedding, Jane cannot sleep. An introspective oneshot that explores the otherworldly bond between Rochester and Jane.


It is the moon that wakes her.

The chamber she has been given to occupy has only two narrow, latticed windows, each without a curtain, and the night was too balmy for her to draw the bed hangings close when she retired. In consequence the moon shines in without obstruction, its bright gleam channeled into a beam that illuminates the very spot where her head rests on the pillow.

She is filled with a desire to be outside, to see this glowing orb in its full splendor, framed not by a window but by the stars themselves, by the ink-black sky. And why should she not? She is as yet beholden to no one. She pulls her shawl from the chair and wraps it around her. Her hand is on the doorknob, turning it when she realizes that she may yet be heard – that her innocent outing may yet be misconstrued as a departure by a sharp ear. But it is too late – she has already opened the door and stepped into the corridor. In the glimmer of moonlight that trickles out from her room she can see that his door is ajar. Then she sees him. He is standing like a carved marble figure near the end of the hall, just outside the only other patch of light in the dark passage, afforded by a small window. She cannot see his expression, but she reads fear in the stillness of his body.

"Jane?" His voice is hushed, a half-whisper, but there is fear in it, too. He is afraid – terrified – that she is going to leave him again. Abandon him. Wound him. She has promised to stay with him, promised never to leave him desolate or forsaken as long as she lives. She knows that he believed and trusted in her pledges. She also knows that wounds run deep, that some run deeper than others, and that a fate of eternal solitude is a terror not easily overcome. Twisting her hands together, she stands in silent condemnation of her own thoughtlessness.

"Yes, sir, it is I."

"Where are you going – _are_ you going?"

"No." She makes her voice gentle. "I rose because I could not sleep."

His breath comes out quickly, and the poignancy of his intense relief sends guilt surging through her veins like fire. Unasked, she goes to him. Hearing her approach, he stretches out his hand and she takes it.

"I could not sleep either." He laces his fingers through hers and wraps his other arm – the fingerless one – around her, pulling her to him. She does not resist. Once, perhaps, she would have felt awkward, standing so close to him in nothing but her nightdress, but tonight she can see nothing wrong in the action. Soon – in only a few hours – she will be his, and he will be hers.

"Are you cold, Darling?"

"No."

"Then, Jane…?"

"Yes?"

"You promised me once that you would wake with me the night before my wedding."

"I remember."

"Will you wake with me now?"

Gently – very gently – she pulls back. She means to read his face, but here, just outside the patch of moonlight, the dark renders her as sightless as he. There is something almost childlike in the way he has asked her, as though the darkness frightened him and he required the comfort of her presence to drive it away. Standing here so close to her, in only his long white shirt and breeches, he seems unreal - a visiting spirit that will vanish at the stroke of daybreak. She has had no troubling dreams, no strange premonitions. No ugly obstacle has reared its head in the night and threatened a gulf between them. Yet a tiny part of her fears to return to bed, dreads the thought of some ghastly image descending upon her in slumber, dimming her hopes, unseating her expectations. Her heart shudders, but his fingers, warm and strong in hers, steady it.

"Yes, sir. I have no wish to return to bed."

There is a low seat at the end of the hall by the window. By unspoken agreement they go to it.

"Come," he says, "let us sit."

The moon is brighter than ever after the darkness of the corridor. Seated on his knee, she turns to gaze at it. The sky is completely devoid of clouds, and in it the moon hangs like a lantern held aloft in welcome. The serenity of the sight reassures her – it seems to convey approbation, to affirm the rightness of the way she has chosen. No unsolicited orders to flee, now; no supernatural commands of departure such as she received on that ill-fated night last year. The time to receive decrees and obey has passed. Now it is _her_ turn to assume supremacy. With the warmth of his arms to hearten her, his trust to strengthen her, she will beat her own path and they will follow it, together.

He senses her abstraction and ventures, "Is it a fine night?"

Recalled to the present, she smiles. "Yes, it is very lovely. The moon shines like a great luminescent plate." She turns to him and asks softly, "Can you see it?"

"No, my fairy. You shall suffice for a moon tonight."

"Do you know, at our first encounter – you recall the night – I thought you were a spirit?"

The night is conducive to sharing confidences.

"I, a spirit?" She can hear the amusement in his voice.

"I heard Mesrour on the road and saw Pilot coming toward me in the gloom and I feared being beset by a Gytrash…" They seem so silly to her now, these childish fantasies, and she laughs softly.

"I had no such doubts." His hand finds her face, his fingers smooth back her hair, returning again and again to her scalp to run themselves through her thick locks. "I knew you for a fairy the moment I saw you." She laughs again, more softly, and chides,

"You scarcely noticed me at first."

"Not at first, no," he amends. "I was a heedless fool. But Jane, as I lay there on the ground, cursing and cross, you appeared beside me… I knew, then." He swallows audibly. His fingers still, resting at the nape of her neck.

That after all their games, all the mysteries and secrets, all the loneliness and longing between them, it would end like this, with the lingering sensation of his fingers tenderly stroking her, the warm intimacy of his embrace, the enormity of his love surrounding her, permeating her, was something she would never have dared to dream.

And yet they are both fully awake.

"Sometimes…" His voice is rich with earnest emotion. "Sometimes I wonder what presence it was that chose to visit us on that night. There! Can you not feel it? It is here still."

She puts her arms around him and murmurs, "There is no one here but I. We are alone." Yet as she speaks, a curious sensation steals over her – subtle, like hearing the whisper of a song once forgotten – and gives the lie to her words. She recalls the unearthly summons she received but a few days ago, but immediately her mind retreats from the memory, dismissing the thought as one too profound to contemplate at present. She clings closer to him, shutting her eyes to step for the briefest of moments into the dark world he now inhabits.

After a childhood spent in virtual invisibility, a youth passed in obscurity, she is now but hours away from uniting herself to one who cannot see her, who perhaps never will see her again. And yet these circumstances, unforeseen, undesired, sad though they are, do not give her cause for regret – not for herself. Knowing him, loving him, has taught her that there exists a dimension beyond the world of mere sight: one that he and she occupy. And here in the dark, with the brightness of the moon diminished to nothing but the shade of a shadow behind her closed lids, she is more aware of it than ever. In this sphere, what need have they of eyes to see, to understand one another – they, whose souls each know the shape of the other's by intuition?

She opens her eyes. The moon, unaccountably, seems to have grown still brighter, though surely the morning cannot be far off. Ought it not to be waning in the sky by now? Time seems to be standing still. In return she stills herself, straining her ears to catch the strokes of the clock downstairs. After several moments, she hears it, faint but steady. The approaching morning will not be held back, by any enchantment.

"Do you feel as if you could sleep now?" His voice is so soft she almost misses it.

"Perhaps, but I would rather not stir quite yet, sir."

"Stay, then. Rest here with me."

"Gladly." She leans her head on his shoulder, and hopes she will never again rest anywhere but by his side. His fingers return to her hair.

"We will be happy, won't we?" he whispers. "I want you to be so happy."

He is bathed in moonlight. It shimmers in his shirt, catches in his hair, smoothes the harsh angles of his face to planes of alabaster. The moonlight makes him beautiful. She nestles closer into the nook between his shoulder and chin and whispers into his ear, "Hush, my dearest."

As her eyes close, she thinks again – how can she help it? – of the mysterious call. No explanation she could conceive of had as yet seemed adequate, but now she begins to believe she may still grasp its full significance.

Until last Monday night, she had moved like one half-asleep, driven in first this direction, then that, like an abandoned vessel on a stormy sea. Believing herself, in her dream-state, to be in full control, she had followed with somnambulant steps a path already laid out for her. Feverish passions beset her, nightmarish obstructions fell in her way, but in spite of them she slept on, her feelings mere shadows, her thoughts only echoes. And when temptation came a second time there was no lunar spirit to guide her. In her solitude, she turned inwardly; she heard _his_ voice calling and, at long last, she woke.


End file.
